Local

The magnet is here. The Muon g-2 is a 15-ton electro-magnet, 50 feet wide, which completed its journey this morning from the national laboratory in Brookhaven, N.Y. to Fermilab in Batavia, Ill.

It was a precarious journey that went smoothly. “There’s a lot of areas that we had planned to have very, very snug fits and everything went as planned, everything was laid out perfect, everything had a backup plan and the execution was perfect on everybody’s part,” said Terry Emmert, president of the company that did the moving.

The magnet moved by ship down the East Coast, through the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, then spent three nights crawling by truck along local roads to reach the lab, maneuvering around bridges, road signs, lights and trees, with engineers taking care not to twist the ring even a few millimeters or it could have been ruined. Overall, the trip took a month. The magnet will be used to study sub-atomic particles.